In one conventional network, a server farm includes a plurality of servers assigned a common network address. The load of processing packets arriving at the server farm is distributed between or among the servers by a front end switch or server in accordance with a network address translation technique. In this conventional technique, the destination network address of an incoming packet is modified by the front end switch or server. Disadvantageously, this consumes an undesirably large amount of processing bandwidth. Also, in this conventional arrangement, if one of the servers fails, its packet processing functions may be reassigned to another server in the server farm.
With the advent of virtualization, a plurality of virtual machines may be resident in a single physical server, and each of these virtual machines may be able to process received packets. It would be desirable to provide a technique to distribute the load of processing the received packets between or among the virtual machines that does not result in and/or involve as a consequence of implementing the technique the modification of the destination network addresses of the one or more packet, in order to reduce the amount of processing bandwidth consumed in processing the received packets.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications, and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, it is intended that the claimed subject matter be viewed broadly.